


Echolocation

by FireEye



Category: Final Fantasy I
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 09:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16992429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/pseuds/FireEye
Summary: The Light Warriors inadvertently pick up a friend in the Lich's domain.





	Echolocation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ysavvryl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysavvryl/gifts).



**Earth**

The screech of terror that echoed through the fenlands was most unbecoming a warrior of destiny.  The backpack hit the peat, cracking dry, dead branches, as their most illustrious, spiritually enlightened brawler stumbled back away from it, sinking into the mud.

Huge eyes peered out of a tiny face, and a long, webbed arm stretched almost in greeting from between the wool blankets.

“The devil...?”

“Is it a vampire?”

“A _vampire_?”

“A _little_ vampire.”

“It’s not a vampire.”

“Are you sure?”  An impartial opinion cut in, from a woman who held no spiritual enlightenment to speak of.  “In my village, there was a legend of a vampire clan that shape-changed into bats during the day.”

“Swamp rot.”

“A _vampire_?”  Barely having recovered her footing, the brawler jittered.  Sliding her fingers along her neck, she twisted her head this way and that trying to see, “Did it bite me?”

The mage reached out her hand, letting the bat cling to her fingers as she eased it free of the pack.  It crawled up her arm, seeking shelter under her cloak.

“It’s a fruit eater, I think.”  She wove a spell, pouring life back into a dried fruit from her snack pouch, and offered it to the form huddled under her arm.  The little bat stretched for the food, and tried to shove the entire thing into its mouth to munch on contentedly.  “See?”

“What are you doing with it?” their second mage asked, “You’re not planning to _keep_ it, are you?”

“What if I am?  We’re too far from the caves now for it to find its way home; it might not survive if we turn it loose.”

“What if it’s in service to the enemy?”

“ _What_ enemy?  The Lich is dead, and so is the vampire.”

“She’s right.”  Hefting the backpack before the swamp could claim it, the soldier offered it to the brawler.  “None of the bigger ones attacked us, either.”

“Besides,” their first mage scratched the bat’s fruit-stained chin, and it stretched its little neck out, “it’s cute.”

 

**Fire**

Flows of molten rock hissed and steamed as it reached the water’s edge, and basaltic sand slid beneath their feet as they endeavored to do the same.  Few skeletal trees remained on the blackened shores of the caldera lake surrounding the gurgling cinder cone, but they marked a path where the lava rarely traveled.

The Fiend may have been dead, but, in the shadow of the volcano that remained – a thing of nature, neither good nor evil and perpetual as the earth itself – safety was yet across the shore.

Untold hours trekking through the sweltering heat of an active volcano had left them weary to the point of exhaustion, and they huddled around the canoe run aground on the dark shore.

Amid the charred remains of a trees, one of the would-be branches unfurled its wings.  In a cloud of soot, it flapped and fluttered, zipping across the shore to land in the mage’s hair and burrow into her cloak.  She laughed, a loud and welcome sound.

“You stayed after all,” she told the little bat.  It had grown some, since it had first stowed away in her companion’s pack, but it still fit snugly in the hood of her traveling cloak.

Her hands shook as she dug into her pouch of dried fruit for a snack.  It took her two attempts to revive the berry, which she offered the ravenous little beast.  “Just how long were you waiting, hmm?”

She turned her head to find her fellow mage frowning at her. 

“You oughtn’t waste your energy.  You need rest.”

Scratching the bat between the ears, she glimpsed the other two from the corner of her eye as they struggled to shove the canoe from the dark sand into the steaming caldera spring.

“We all do,” she answered, as the bat curled up beneath her chin.  “What of it?”

 

**Water**

The dryside grottos in the upper shrine had nothing alike to the winged creature that flapped and glided and swept through the still air like seals and serpents shimmered through the depths of the water, and clicked and tittered like a porpoise.

Only at first taken with the land-dwellers in their midst, the mermaids that lived within the grottos found the bat absolutely beyond _fascinating_.  Every one of them gathered to touch its soft, dry fur, until it took flight and  found refuge, dangling from the ceiling.  They called to it, mimicking its clicks and _kee_ s.

“Maybe it ought to stay here.”

“She,” the mage corrected absently, somewhat taken by a stray mermaid’s curious attention to her clothes.

“Maybe _she_ ought to stay here,” the soldier stated, unperturbed by the correction.  “It may be dangerous down below, and that’s without having to force-feed the poor thing oxyale.”

“What if we don’t come back?” the mage asked, dragging her attention back to fore, “There’s nothing for her to eat here.”

“All in, are we?”

“Well...” the mage sighed.  Quite simply, the little bat was getting more and more adventurous; it had been much the same in the waterfall caves.  “It wasn’t like I wanted to drag her into danger, it was only that she wouldn’t _stay behind_.”

“Wait,” the brawler cut in, disentangling herself from another curious mermaid, “who said we won’t come back.  We made it this far, haven’t we?”

“Yes,” she agreed.  “We have.”

Holding up her arms, she clicked her tongue.  The bat zipped from her upside-down perch and dove into the mage’s cloak.

The mermaids _ooh_ ed and _ahh_ ed and giggled and chortled and clustered around her.  She offered the bat a fruit, and a small face and webbed arm emerged from her clothes just long enough to snatch it, drawing forth a bubble of awed cooing.

 

**Wind**

The Fiend had arisen from her slumber, filling the altar chamber with her draconic body.  Twisting, coiling serpentine necks ended in quick-witted heads, each filled with malice and sharp, serrated teeth.  Each disparate and whole.

Two of those heads had been cut low, but neither loss seemed to impact the mother of dragons.  If anything, it made those remaining that much more fierce as Tiamat sought to bring an end to the Light that confronted her, snapping and snarling and consuming the limited air itself with breath of fire and ice and static.

One of them, twisting and twining and roiling in anger, followed the lines of magic – the healing wind – and locked eyed on her.

Healer.

Shield.

Heart of the party.

Her back was to the wall when a dark shape darted out of her clothes.  The bat flapped and fluttered in front of the dragon’s head, clicking and chirping.  A burst of air pushed the bat out of the path of its snapping jaw, but it was enough to distract the head from its target.

The mage slipped out of danger, coming to stand beside her peer at the rearguard.

“You alright?” she asked, nigh breathless from holding the form to channel her magic.

The mage sighed.  “Me?  Never better.”

A long familiar weight landed heavily in the hood of her traveling cloak, clicking in her ear. 

 

**Chaos**

The broken temple sat silent in the midnight moonlight.

In living memory, only the most ancient remembered in dreams the sect that had once worshipped there, but now two thousand years of life flowed from all the corners of the world to the altar within.  The quest, then, was foretold to end where it began.

Five bats eyed them from the rafters.  Five bats that had eyed them on their first quest to heal this cursed land, years ago.  Five bats, that dropped from their perches and fluttered around them in a flurry of excitement, following the current of raw magic that permeated the temple.

Back to back, four warriors stood amidst it all.  And in the ear of one mage, a tiny voice chirruped.

“She says they’re not real bats.”

“What?”

“What else could they be?”

“...are they vampires?”

“No...” the mage struggled to put to words that which the bat was telling her.  The mind of a much simpler creature, whose concerns were mostly warmth and hiding and food, didn’t have the understanding to _tell_ in the same way.  “They’re... something different.  _Otherworldly_.”

“She says... they’ve been here... _forever_ , waiting.”  _Forever_ was a nebulous account in bat understanding, and did little to narrow it down.  “Waiting for the Light to...” the mage’s gaze fell upon the Orb that sat darkly upon the altar, and all eyes followed hers, “...break the curse.”

The curse that lay upon them now.  A curse two thousand years in the past.

An unbroken circle.

Again...

...and again...

...and again.

The brawler’s hesitant voice broke through a reticence filled with skittering and chirping.

“Is she coming with us?”  She shifted her weight, and added, “She is good luck.”

“Why not?” the mage asked.  “She’s come this far.”

Breathing a deep and calming breath, she stepped forward, two thousand years into the past.

**Author's Note:**

> I love the bats in the game, they are adorable. Somehow I never thought to really incorporate them into fic, though, so thank you for that. And, I know, I know - the Sky Warriors regained the ability to speak as bats because of the shift in power etc, etc. But, running with the _Bats!_ theme, it kinda made sense at the time.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you like it. Happy Yuletide! :)


End file.
